Bone Crossed(61)

I did, however, see a little canvas bag hanging from the rafters just behind us.

About the same place Adam started using physical force to move through the crowd.

The ceilings in Uncle Mike's are about fourteen feet in the air.

I wasn't going to reach that bag without a ladder--and I wasn't going to be able to find a ladder anytime soon.

A slender, almost effeminate man walked under the bag as I watched.

He jerked to a halt, then threw back his head and roared.

A sound so huge that it drowned out all of the noise in the building, shaking the rafters.

His glamour, the illusion that made him look human, shattered, and I swear I could almost see a pile of sparkling dust spread out from him.

He was huge, an unearthly mass of gray and blue, still vaguely human-shaped, but his face looked like it had melted, leaving only vague bumps where his nose should have been.

His mouth was pretty easy to spot--it would be hard to miss all those big teeth.

Silvery eyes, too small for that huge face, glared out from under sparkly blue eyebrows.

He shook himself, and the sparkly dust scattered again, melting as it touched warmer surfaces.

He was shedding snow.

In the silence that followed, a small cranky voice said, "Freakin' snow elf." I couldn't see the speaker, but it sounded like it was coming from somewhere right next to the newly emerged monster.

He roared again and reached down, hauling a woman up by the hair.

She was more angry than scared and pulled a weapon out of somewhere and cut her own hair, dropping down and out of my sight again.

The thing--I'd never heard of a snow elf--shook the hair he held and threw it behind him.

I glanced back at Adam, but in the short moments since I'd last looked, he'd disappeared, leaving behind only a trail of bloody bodies, most of them still standing and ticked off.

I looked at the snow elf and the bag above his head.

No one was watching me, not with a rampaging werewolf and an abominable snowman in the room.

I stripped off the dress and bra, stepped out of my shoes and underwear as fast as I could.

I'm not a werewolf; my coyote shape comes between one breath and the next, and brings exhilaration and not pain.

The snow elf was still standing underneath the bag when I jumped up, landed on someone's shoulders, and looked for him.

The crowd was so tight it was like being at a Metallica concert, and I had a road of heads and shoulders right to the snow elf--who was ten feet tall at the very least and stuck up a whole person's worth over the rest of the people.

He saw me coming and grabbed for me, but I'm fast and he missed.

Actually, he probably missed because he didn't know I was going to jump on his shoulder and launch myself at the little bag, rather than because of any speed or dexterity on my part.

That damned mountain of a fae was fast, too.

The magic buzzed angrily at me as I snatched the bag in my jaws.

I dangled for a moment before the string that held it broke.

I fell and waited for the giant hands of the snow elf to crush me, but it was Uncle Mike himself who snatched me out of the air and tossed me toward the door.